Gaikai Puts Up a Huge List of Streaming Demos On Its Website

Remember Gaikai? That tiny startup that wished to enable folks with not-so-good computers but definitely good internet speeds to play games on the web browser itself? This service was a bit like OnLive, the streaming gaming console, minus the actual buying of another dedicated piece of hardware. Gaikai allows you to do the same thing while lazing around on your bed, with your personal room heater laptop.

However, unlike OnLive, Gaikai will only be showcasing demos for games on their website. It is like a quick advertising service; instead of people waiting for downloads of demos to finish (and demos these days are huge), they can go to the Gaikai website and launch the demo of whatever game they wish to play and see if they like the game. Gaikai uses its own software to compress the images and send it to your browser screen, while your keyboard and mouse movements are translated into its input in the server far away. All this is accomplished with the magic of Java.

Currently, the selection of game demos is quite interesting, with The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Dead Space 2, Dead Rising 2, Mass Effect 2, Dragon Age II, and Crysis 2 adorning its halls (and we suspect they really like the number 2). All you need to do is point your browser to the website, allow Java to always run on that site and start playing.

Sadly, however, the service is only supported in some regions, and mine was not one of those supported regions. I suspect this is due to control-lag issues and will not be solved in a while. So if you do try it out, let us know how it went eh?

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Kaushik

A mobile technology lover and a Strategy and RPG-game fanatic. I also enjoy astronomy and programming. I am a biotechnology engineer learning through this fascinating subject while poring over computer science.
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